The next situation is something I am still trying to process. Since the pandemic began, until now, businesses lost their focus on customer service. I live in a really small town and the place we go to shop (going to town) has only about 28,000 people. The principal mega-store in town is a Super Walmart. Besides the Aldis, there is no reasonable place to shop for groceries in town. Before the pandemic, it was a 24 hour store, which was great for us. My wife and I worked odd hours and so sometimes it was convenient to go shopping at 1am. Fewer people and a lot of stockers blocking aisles while they did their job was no big deal.
Now?
The store closes at 10pm and reopens at 6am. This means they are stocking the shelves all day, blocking aisles and frustrating the mass of people trying to shop and get out of there. One thing that I used to love about Walmart was the wide aisles, as compared to Kmart, along with store employees ready and willing to help. Remember, this is a small town and so you are liable to run into people you know in the store and these conversations often block aisles that are already clogged. Then there are parents and kids talking to other parents with kids, who seem absolutely oblivious that people need to get by them. These things were minor annoyances before the pandemic, can now be infuriating because the store won't go back to a 24 hour operation. It's like they decided that since their customers had no good alternatives, the façade of caring for the customer was ripped away.
The other example is the local Applebee's. I know you fancy folks have all sorts of options for a nice dinner out, but the only big chain sports bar/restaurant is Applebee's in this town. Pre-pandemic, it was a light cheery place with music playing in the background. It felt special to go there on a weekend. We went there a couple times after businesses started opening up again, but it was bad. The whole atmosphere of the place was different. No music and it seemed darker. The food presentation was horrific in disposable containers. The food we used to enjoy, looked like it had been microwaved The petals were off the rose, as it were. A year later we tried it again, and it still wasn't great. The food presentation was better, but the atmosphere was dark and uninviting, which is a shame. Applebee's was a place we went to almost every week, but we longer have any desire to go there.